brown skin + glitter

They only listen when you're dead and once you're dead you're dead. Is it when I die that people will listen? Perhaps my death is the lesson.

I need a reduction. They’re always sore and I hate wearing bras. I leave them free and the church excommunicates me. I never had a god anyway. Defence of me has always been weak, and future prospects unsurprisingly bleak. Someone else’s curse lands upon me in a heap and I stop pretending. How loud must I scream how long must I scream before I am heard? What difference does it make? An elusive sort of voice; noisy and less at once. An elusive sort of body; hideous and soft at once. What difference does it make?

the number games I play are never enough to chase the lingering shadows away. truly, I sleep soundly, knowing that Cerberus at my feet devours those that creep in my bedroom at night, and I wake to fading wails and the screams of men whose wars fought, battles lost, become the loaf I tear to feed him. I suppose one greater could subdue him I wonder where that greater is.

clear reflections in strange places unexpected places I read lines backwards + upside down a photo I took, I flipped it; water, sky, and the sky was water inside the upside down, not the show instead, a home that exists only in the truth mystically copied onto the glass of my face

the more you listen, the more you hear the more you look, the more you see so, songs unsung take form of their own as foreign ears press into the silence I project where there is nothing, a record of youth appears authored by foreign ears do I, composer of my own tale have the rights to those masters? the ones begot by machinations external to me; a genesis of stories told about me, without me? can I ever own those rights?

How bad is it? How bad can it really be? I watch you chain yourself to that wall and I thought it was only with the turn of each new moon, until I found traces of something odd on the rim of the mug you gave me before bed each night, and I decided not to sip and I slept and awoke to sounds of you howling in the basement below. How could I sleep through all that? Right, the tea. So, it was nightly, all along? You become this monster, all alone? Protecting me from yourself, I heard you sing once, when you refused to show me. How bad could it truly have been?

I left there early that evening - something wasn’t right. Home again, and the ancestors called, said I had a visitor; face covered, shadowed. “He wanted to come in for tea.” they whispered to me. “We denied him.” Access denied. “You’ve met him in dreams past. We protected you then,” they said, “we’ll protect you now, always.” I believe them.

And this isn’t my story Whatever that was A distant memory becoming And a strange bud blooms In my own darkness, extended; Where there were hands, There are naked branches, And feet, Roots clipped, cleansed Some idea of purity in the rain That lands upon this soil Where I take my rest Finally I take my rest Finally.

I listen to his fuckass songs, and read his fuckass lyrics about his fuckass lies and fuckass feelings. Perhaps my word use is too crude; flowery language holds little, about as much as a newborn can fit in its tiny little fist, and such is the measure of regard he offered me, newborn, though, he is not. Little man, big feelings. Little man with his big feelings.

Have I not given enough ????